


you've shut yourself off from the world

by timekept



Category: McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Angst, Bad Writing, FUCK, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Running Away, idk sorry, im so tired, listen im sorry im just, my brain is dead, pbbbbt, pining i guess, this was meant to be rly short, uh, uhhhhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 00:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11543643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timekept/pseuds/timekept
Summary: Nick has a crisis, quits his job, and vanishes for two years. Then he comes back.





	you've shut yourself off from the world

**Author's Note:**

> oKAY I HAD ISSUES POSTING THIS SO HOPEFULLY IT WORKS THIS TIME
> 
> self indulgent shit drabble based on my own fic prompt on tumblr of "nick has a Crisis. quits his job, disappears into the desert states for two years, comes back. he’s got calloused hands and a trimmer frame and a farmers tan and his hair is still asymmetrical but goes down to his shoulders on one side and to the bottom of his jaw on the other and griff is /shook/." bc why not
> 
> the title is from "[H]eartless" by Goodnight Midnight which i listened to on repeat for like 27 years while writing this

Nick had left two years ago. 

Halfway through an episode of CoolGames Inc., halfway through Griffin’s impassioned explanation of why exactly a game about  _‘Navy SEALS but, like, actual seals’_ was surely GOTY material, Nick had cut him off.

“Griff--look, sorry. I can’t..I can’t do this.”

“Nick, listen to me! Different classes, Nick! Leopard seals would be Tanks, harp seals would be Healers--”

“No, I can’t--I can’t do any of this anymore, not just this game.” That had shut Griffin up. Not just the words, but the desperate tone that accompanied them.

“Okay, okay bud, I’m shutting off the recording. What’s going on? Talk to me.” Griffin clicked off the recording program and waited patiently, his heart lurching when he heard a choked noise from the other end of the Skype call. “Hey, hey, Nick, what’s going on? What’s wrong?” Griffin had realized he was clenching the edge of his desk so hard his knuckles were turning white, but he couldn’t relax his grip because Nick, his  _boy_ , his  _best friend_ , was definitely crying on the other end of the call and Griffin had no way to comfort him.

“I...I’m sorry. I can’t...I’ll be safe. I don’t know. I need to go.” Nick’s voice had cracked when he spoke, but Griffin hadn’t had time to respond before the notification came up:  _ **Call Ended.**_

Apparently Nick had called Chris Grant as soon as he’d hung up, because Griffin hadn’t been more than 20 minutes into his mental breakdown when he got the bewildered call from his boss asking why Nick was quitting his job out of the blue with no two-weeks’ notice. Griffin only vaguely remembered the hysterical call he’d made to Justin, who’d gently told him that it probably  _wasn’t_  a good idea to try and get his ex-coworker 5150′ed from 1,759 miles away, and that if he needed to come stay in West Virginia for a while, that would be just fine.

* * *

Nick’s twitter and Instagram had kept updating in the following days, weeks, months. Griffin checked them religiously, at first, desperate for confirmation of Nick’s safety, because every call and text he made went unanswered. Nick, it seemed, was wandering. His status updates and captions were cryptic, often snippets of song lyrics or, more often, quotes from an anime--but his geotags on instagram differed greatly as they jumped from location to location.

  * Mt. Diablo.  _“Seeds rooted in the flesh and blood of our ancestors, reach out with green, green leaves. Bear heavy, heavy fruit…”_ Nick's caption read. 
  *  Great Valley Grasslands State Park.  _“The sun sets today and rises again. Flowers bloom to fill the land, but not the flowers of yesterday.”_
  *  Death Valley Natl. Park.  _“There are countless fissures in the physical world. Those who vanish like smoke are lost in such hollows--without their memories, without their souls.”_
  *  Kofa National Park.  _“Don't let yourself be blinded by fear or anger. Everything is only as it is.”_



Nick never seemed to post selfies anymore, just pictures of desert wilderness and small towns and abandoned buildings.

  *  Bullfrog, Utah.
  *  Canyonlands National Park.
  *  Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.



Griffin stopped texting after the first three months. Gradually, he stopped checking Nick’s social media. It was a year on when he finally unfollowed him on twitter. There was never any new information anyway, Griffin reasoned. Really, it just hurt too much to see Nick’s name. Really, he hoped Nick would notice. No angry message ever came to ask him why he’d broken mutuals, and Griffin didn’t know if that hurt more than clicking the unfollow button did.

* * *

Nick had left two years ago.

It was a Saturday morning, just past 10 am, when Griffin went to answer the firm knock on his front door.   
“Coming, coming!” he snapped, hurriedly pulling on a pair of slacks, tugging a polo shirt over his head. Griffin crammed his glasses onto his face and swung the door open to chew out whatever salesperson had decided Saturday morning was a good time to bother him, but his anger died in his throat with his voice. The man on his doorstep didn’t look like a salesman. He had long, dark hair that brushed the top of his shoulder on the left and just barely reached his jawline on the right; an asymmetrical cut that framed his face and neck like a portrait painting. He had a beard--not a full one, not like Travis, but something decidedly more-than-stubble. And, perhaps most importantly, he was wearing a light T-shirt with an anime girl on it.  _Holy fuck._

“Nick?” Griffin managed to choke out, his throat suddenly dry, all moisture rushing, traitorously, to his eyes.

“Hey, Griff.” The-Man-Who-Was-Nick said, offering a tentative smile. 

Griffin didn’t think before throwing himself at Nick, wrapping him in a tight hug, clinging tightly to the back of the younger man’s shirt in balled fists because Griffin would be damned if he lost him again. It was only a moment, less than half a heartbeat, before Nick reciprocated the hug. He wasn’t as soft a boy anymore, Griffin realized. Some of his softness had been replaced by muscle; his hands were rough and calloused, his skin was textured and darkened from sun and sand and wind. Griffin had the distinct impression that he was being held by a stranger--and was crying into the shoulder of his weeby fucking shirt. Griffin pulled away. He hadn’t realized he had started to cry, but now he hiccuped as he took in a shaky breath and rubbed the tears from his eyes. 

“Where the FUCK have you been, man?” Griffin managed, cursing his shaking voice and studying the face of the man in front of him, suddenly aware that he didn’t know what they were to one another now, where he stood in the hierarchy of relationships in this stranger’s life.

“California? Arizona, Nevada, Utah....Colorado, New Mexico...my own head, mostly, though.” Nick said, ducking his head slightly, as if embarrassed.

"Why didn't you ever answer my texts?" Griffin couldn't keep the plaintive edge from his voice and he nearly cringed at how pathetic he sounded. Something dark flickered across Nick's gaze and he took a moment before sighing and meeting Griffin's eyes again.

"It was....It was too painful." He said, "I couldn't....I couldn't do it and by the time I felt like maybe I could handle it...you'd stopped texting, so. I just figured that...that I shouldn't bother you."

"So you show up at my house unannounced instead?" Griffin tried to joke, but Nick flinched at his words and Griffin's heart caught in his throat. "God, Nick, I'm just--it was a shitty goof, I was just fucking--fucking crying over seeing you again," Griffin reached out and grabbed Nick's wrist. "--don't you dare think...think that I don't want you here." Nick stared dumbly at where Griffin's hand wrapped around his wrist. "Please come inside." Griffin said, the plaintive tone creeping back into his words. "Please." Nick swallowed hard and, slowly, nodded.

"Alright."

* * *

"Coffee?" Griffin asked, fidgeting nervously with the band of his watch, suddenly desperate for something to do. "Please." Nick sighed, settling onto Griffin's couch. "I haven't slept properly in....well. Probably two years." Griffin poured milk into two cups of coffee, carefully tipped in a couple spoonfuls of sugar.

"Yeah," Griffin said, picking up the mugs and walking into the living room, "me neither." He set down Nick's mug on the coffee table and took a sip from his own, relishing the caffeine. Nick hesitated before picking up the coffee, but cupped the mug in his hands and didn't drink.

"You either?" Nick asked. He sounded distant, and something just this side of ashamed.

"I've missed the hell out of you, dude." Griffin said, simply. "It was....I didn't know if I'd see you again. It was like losing part of myself, like, sorry if that sounds weird but-" Griffin was rambling, he realized, but was powerless to stop himself from pouring out the accumulated words of two silent years as he took a seat beside Nick on the couch. "-it was so rough, I really don't know if I slept at all that first week. I cried a lot, I know that. Juice thought I was losing it. Kept calling me and asking if I wanted to fly up and stay with him or dad. It....it sucked." Griffin's voice got quieter as his sentence ended; he noticed Nick's hands trembling. "Why....why did you run off like that, Nick?" There was silence. Nick wouldn't raise his gaze to meet Griffin's, his hands wouldn't stop shaking--so much so that he set down his untouched mug of coffee and seemed to curl into himself, tucking his hands up to his chest defensively. 

"You don't have to answer-" Griffin started, reaching out to touch Nick's shoulder.

"I was scared." Nick spat out, his words tumbling from his lips fast and fearful, "I was, I don't...I didn't know what to do and so I ran."

Griffin gently squeezed his friend's shoulder. "What were you scared of, dude? Why....Couldn't you have told someone...? Me?" He felt Nick shudder.

"Ha," Nick laughed bitterly. "This..this is where you kick me out of your house, but alright. I was scared because I had...I _have_ , feelings, for you." Griffin opened his mouth to speak, but Nick held up his hand, silencing him, and continued, "I thought, 'you know, I'll just run and not deal with it and it'll go away.' But it didn't, so I guess I'm back here so you can hit me or something and I...I can get some closure." Nick started to stand up as if to leave, but Griffin tightened his grip on the younger man's arm and pulled him back down to the couch. His head was spinning and his heart was pounding in his throat but he knew one thing for certain: He didn't want Nick leaving. Not again. Not now.  _Not ever_. He saw Nick turn toward him, eyes wide and sad and questioning, and Griffin felt like he was drowning in the heaviness of the silence.

"Please," Griffin choked out, "Don't go." Nick looked perplexed but nodded, however slightly.

"Okay." Nick murmured. Griffin let out a shaky breath and tried to get his mind to stop whirling. He thought back to the nights he'd spent curled up in the fetal position, crying his eyes out and not knowing if or when he'd see Nick again. He thought of the videos he'd had to scrap or rerecord because he'd burst into tears partway through. He thought about having been unable to see fucking  _Sonic The Hedgehog_  content without his lip trembling, about how broken he'd felt for the past two years and how really, losing a friend was hard, yeah, but he'd been grieving like a widow and was only just realizing it. 

Maybe this was where he was supposed to make an eloquent speech, he thought, where he was meant to say,  _'don't leave me, Nick, I love you too,'_  get on one knee and sing a mangled version of  _A Thousand Years_ , but that...that wasn't the Griffin McElroy style, not really. He was a damn comedian, not an actor in a soap opera, so he took a gamble and a deep breath.

"Nicolas Robinson," he said, his voice finally obeying him and not quivering, "are you saying that it has taken you _two years_ just to ask me out to dinner?" Griffin quirked his eyebrow and smiled as he saw shock and understanding bloom across Nick's face. "Because I'm really not that hard to impress. Just be like, 'Hey Griffin, wanna go to Taco Bell tonight? In a gay way? Let's commit a Big Gay Food Crime together.'" Nick snorted and that was it; Griffin wheezed as he cracked up at his own goof. It was ridiculous and that was what made it perfect, made it  _them_. It was a minute before they caught their breaths, and Nick was the first one to speak, blinking tears of laughter from his eyes.

"Griffin McElroy," he said, smiling, "will you go out to dinner with me?"

"Absolutely," Griffin said, leaning gently against Nick's shoulder, playfully nudging him, "But absolutely not Taco Bell, because that would be tragic and greatly interfere with my policy of fucking on the first date."

"Oh my god, Griffin," Nick gasped, choking back laughter again, "You're terrible."

Griffin beamed.


End file.
